He dissolved into a fit of chuckling laughter, until the Lady Jersey was announced. And then came others—my Lord Petersham, the Duke of Rutland, Scrope Davies, Mrs. O’Neill, the Duchess of Gordon, and half a dozen more. The little room was soon too full for its capacity; but the spirits of the courtly host surmounted all difficulties and made a positive grace of inconvenience. He tripped, he chatted, he was perpetually talking and on the move, exchanging badinage with one, recalling incidents of past happy days with another, pointing out the treasures of his modest sanctum to a third—a picture by Morland, a clock by Verdier, a Louis XV bonheur du jour. Exile, he wished to show, had not dulled his appreciation of the beautiful, or shaken his position as a wit and supreme arbiter of the elegancies. Now as always it was a privilege to claim his acquaintanceship, to be seen on his arm; now as always his smile or his frown could make or break.
In the midst, a candle guttered heavily on the mantelpiece, and a little girl, the landlord’s petted one, ran into the room.
“Monsieur Brummell,” she cried, “Monsieur Brummell, you have not yet given me the sou you promised for nanan.”
He caught her by the arm.
“Hush!” he said. “Do you not see the company?”
She stared round with wide, wondering eyes.
“What company, Monsieur? I see only a row of chairs!”
“Look again, Babette.”
“I am looking hard, Monsieur.”
The Beau, releasing his grip, sank into a seat. Before him on the wall loomed a cheap mirror. He saw the reflection in it of a broken, toothless old man, semi-palsied, dirty, degraded. His scratch-wig, poked awry, was foul with rancid grease; his shoes were lustreless and in holes. He raised dim, wandering eyes, and marked the squalid, unfurnished walls, the one whist-table with a broken leg, the three common shells on the mantelpiece flanked by a couple of reechy tallow candles in brass sconces. And—yes, the row of empty chairs. Staring like one awakened, he uttered a dreary little laugh, and beckoned to the child.